The amount of electricity being consumed by data centres has increased by 32% between 2020 and 2021, according to the latest CSO report.

The increase between January to March 2015 and October to December 2021 was 265%.

Niamh Shanahan, Statistician in the Environment and Climate Division at the CSO, said: "The report shows the total metered electricity consumption by data centres by quarter for the period 2015 to 2021. Data centre consumption increased from 290 Gigawatt hours in January to March 2015 to 1,058 GWh in October to December 2021.

"The increase in consumption was driven by a combination of existing data centres using more electricity and new data centres being added to the grid.

"The percentage of total metered electricity consumption accounted for by data centres increased from 5% in 2015 to 14% in 2021.

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"Large energy users with very high consumption accounted for 23% of total metered consumption in 2021. The total metered electricity consumption in 2021 was 28,506 GWh which was a 5% increase on 2020."

Earlier information posted by the CSO also shows where the most electricity is consumed, with Dublin 15 at 15% and Dublin 2 at 11% representing the highest proportion of non-residential electricity consumption in 2021 for the Dublin postal districts area.

Non-residential consumption was 67% of total metered electricity consumption in 2021, while Urban residential and Rural residential tariff groups were 21% and 12% respectively.

Dublin postal districts had the highest proportion of residential consumption in 2021 at 18%, followed by Cork (12%), Dublin county (7%), Galway (6%) and Kildare (5%).

Mrs Shanahan added: "The number of non-residential electricity meters increased from 274,094 in 2015 to 290,384 in 2021 while the number of residential electricity meters increased by around 106,000 in the same period.

"Around 10% of residential customers consumed less than 1,000 kilowatt hours in 2020 which was well below the median of 3,594 kilowatt hours."